The RTX 4080 is a great card, but it's also an absolute unit. It needs a lot of cooling, and it can make your PC sound like a plane taking off when you put it through the ringer. Thankfully, ASUS just launched what it calls the world's quietest RTX 4080, although it's not visually flashy.
ASUS just released an RTX 4080 GPU made in collaboration with Noctua --- a company you might know for its effective, albeit understated, air cooling solutions and fans. The Noctua RTX 4080 is equipped with two 120mm Noctua fans in their traditional beige-brown coloring, and a massive heatsink with a custom-built vapor chamber. These fans, together with an increased volume, a vapor chamber, and additional efforts by engineers to fine-tune the card's acoustic profile, are the reason why ASUS is saying this is one of the quietest cards out there.
This is not the first time ASUS collaborates with Noctua on such a GPU. Previously, both companies have released an RTX 3070 and an RTX 3080 with this exact configuration. Reviewers praised those cards when they came out, so we'll have to see if the same thing happens with this card. Otherwise, this is the same RTX 4080 we've gotten to know over the last months, equipped with 16GB of VRAM and 9,728 CUDA cores.
ASUS also announced its own SKUs of NVIDIA's just-announced RTX 4070 Ti GPU. The card will come in two different ASUS flavors, including a ROG Strix card with lots of RGB and amazing airflow and a TUF card with an industrial design and military-grade capacitors. You really can't go wrong with either option, as ASUS makes some of the best graphics cards available on the market, and these will be no different.
These two cards, as well as the Noctua RTX 4080, will become available over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out at your retailer of choice.